Marco A. Aguirre Architecture Portfolio RISD

ARCHITECTURAL PORTFOLIO

| 5 PROJECTS

THE ARCHITECTURE OF M. A. AGUIRRE | 2018

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EDUCATION

WORK EXPERIENCE

RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN B FA S E P T 2 0 1 3 - J U N E 2 0 1 8 BArch SEPT 2014 -JUNE 2018

3SIXØ ARCHITECTURE

PROVIDENCE, RI

DESIGN PROPOSALS.

BROWN UNIVERSITY COURSES IN ECONOMICS, COMPTEMPORARY P H I LO S O P H Y, A N D G E R M A N L A N G U A G E .

PROVIDENCE, RI

GREEN B. TRIMBLE TECH HIGH SCHOOL SEPT 2009 - JUNE 2013 ARCHITECTURAL DRAFTING + DESIGN C O N C E N T R AT I O N .

FORT WORTH, TX

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INTERNSHIP

SITE VISITS, CLIENT MEETINGS, BIM MODELING, CAD D R A W I N G S , P R E L I M N A R Y A N A LY S I S A N D S C H E M A T I C JAN 2018 - MAR 2018

U LT R A M O D E R N E A R C H I T E C T S

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INTERNSHIP

A S U M M E R C C R I D E S I G N B U I L D F O R A M U LT I U S E P O LY C A R B O N A T E C O M M U N I T Y P A V I L L I O N .

JUNE 2016 - SEPT 2016

CORESLAB STRUCTURE

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DESIGN FELLOW

D E V O LO P E D M E T H O D O F M O D U L A R FA B R I C CASTED CONCRETE. JUNE 2016 - AUG 2016

N O R M A N WA R D A R C H I T E C T S

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INTERNSHIP

M O D E L M A K I N G , D I G I TA L D R A F T I N G , A N D C O N TA C T I N G C L I E N T S F O R R E S I D E N T I A L P R O J E C T S .

JUNE 2013 - SEPT 2013

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RELATED EXPERIENCE

SKILLS

ACE MENTOR I HIGH SCHOOLS OF CENTRAL RI G A L L E R Y A S S T. I D E P T.O F A R C H , R I S D PRESS COORD I MADE STUDENT BOUTIQUE EXHIBITION COORD I GELMAN GALLERY W E B A D M I N I O I T, R I S D

DESIGN ARCHITECTURAL DRAFTING & DESIGN, METHODS OF CONCRETE CASTING, WEB/GRAPHIC DESIGN P U B L I C AT I O N D E S I G N C A M PA I G N D E S I G N

AWARD & DISTINCTIONS

PROGRAMS R H I N O , R E V I T, A U T O C A D , A D O B E C R E AT I V E S U I T E ,

AMERICAN CONCRETE INSTITUTE | GRANT M AT E R I A L D E V E L O P M E N T + R E S E A R C H

WA L L S T R E E T J O U R N A L | F E AT U R E “MINIMALIST MUSIC’S LIQUID ARCHITECTURE”

MICROSOFT SUITE, GOOGLE APPS.

LANGUAGES S PA N I S H ( N AT I V E )

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E N G L I S H ( N AT I V E )

A R TA N D S E E K . N E T | F E AT U R E

PERSONAL

“SINAGE WORKS”

AMBITIOUS | CRITICAL

D A L L A S C A S A O R G A N I Z AT I O N | C O M P E T I T I O N

RESOURCEFUL | CURIOUS

PA R A D E O F P L AY H O U S E S

E N I G M AT I C | F E T C H I N G

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p.6 1

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4 5 p.18

1. CONCRETE VITALE 2. SUBLIME PAPERCLIP 3. CHARACTER BUILDING 4. SOUTHLIGHT 5. THESIS

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

p.12

p.24

p.30

p.36

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CONCRETE VITALE

From a precast concrete course sponsered by Coreslab Structues, Concrete Vitale, is a material exploration meant for exhibition. This project is an experiment with concrete as a drawing medium, born from a series of disconnected concepts by each group member, Fan Wu, Linfeng Ke, and I. Subjects such as gravity, directionality, and performance of a line which would be developed into an animated concrete space.

2down, 1right; .5down, 2rightDiagonal

3down, 0 left; .125down, 2leftVertical

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Our question: “What happens the moment a drawing enters the real world and becomes a built object? What forces are present in this transformation and how can we measure or predict these transitions?� From here, we explored lines as concrete objects... and found a site that would offer multiple scenarios and a had a dynamic installation potential. The site was a man-made cliff embedded into river bay.

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CONCRETE VITALE

The site, divided into two colliding grids in plan was marked and modeled. To cast the lines, we used fabric casting methods to create an inventory of 1-1 scaled models of lines that spanned, turned, and floated. Using fabric tubes called socks for the formwork we then trailed various concrete mixes in order to get the strongest and most agile mix.

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The socks were held in place by 2�x4� frames which allowed us to model the lines in space as prescribed in the earlier drawings. Once the frame and formwork was completed, we poured the fiberglass reinforced concrete mix in sections and with various consistencies to have the medium complete the span of each line.

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10 CONCRETE VITALE

The lines were exhibited in the department gallery, across three rooms where they could be installed to simmulate the ideal experience, a bayside concrete jungle. From its conception on the page to its birth in material the project was a liberal take on the transformations in architectural practice, a closer look of how our drawings are meant to be built.

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THE SUBLIME PAPERCLIP

THE SUBLIME PAPERCLIP

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For a studio called “Sublime and Monstrous,� students were asked to find a device which one could derive a project with any program and unlimited budget and time. The device was likened to a McGuffin, an object at the beginning of a film that serves merely as a trigger for the plot, (the plot of course being an architectural course), my device was the paper clip. My program was a multi-building city-wide hospice institution. From an 88 paper clip alphabet (right), I began to construct a vocabulary that would bring drawing compositions to a hospice institution.

THE SUBLIME PAPERCLIP

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THE SUBLIME PAPERCLIP

The city of Providence would be saturated with the hospice’s presence. The living and dying would be intertwined and the aura of awareness and interaction would be formidable. The sublime paperclip is now the hospice city. The city now has an unmistakable presence within it, full of color, joy, and meaningful parting. 88 paper clips became 16 paintings, then 16 models, and last nine “built” buildings/installations.

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THE SUBLIME PAPERCLIP

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PAPERCLIP PROVIDENCE

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THE SUBLIME PAPERCLIP

1. Library of Memories 2. Botanical garden 3. Camera obscura in a cliffside 4. Dogpark 5. Recliner proposals 6. Sound vortex 7. Monument for the Unattended Dead 8. Light installation 9. Large event space

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1' - 1/32"

1' - 1/64"

1' - 1/16"

1' - 1/64"

1' - 1/16" 1' - 1/128"

1' - 1/32"

THE SUBLIME PAPERCLIP

1' - 1/4" 1' - 1/128"

1' - 1/64"

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CHARACTER BUILDING Character Building, an advanced studio at RISD led by young architect Nick Safley, explored the ideas of shape and form and how they come to inform new methods of programming and aesthetics. Highly seduced by the ideas of shapey buildings, and with the program of an office tower for Boston’s quickly growing Seaport District, I began an investigation of shape and color and their inhabitation, to a resolution of a new kind of office experience.

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CHARACTER BUILDING

Intended to be a building for Silicon-Valley types who so constantly look towards the unconventional as catalyst for their own ideas, this building is not meant to be easy to occupy. Every corner, every boardroom, every “hallway” is meant to be occompanied with a set of problem solving situations. 30 unique shapes with rooms (up to 150) filled the (prerequested) building envelope as free clearance catwalks lined the interior. Leebeus Wood’s writing was the inspiration.

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“In the spaces voided by destruction, new structures are injected. Complete in themselves, they do not make an exact fit, but exist as spaces within spaces, making no attempt to reconcile the gaps between old and new, between two radically different systems of spacial order and thought. These gaps can only be filled in time. the new structures contain free spaces, the forms of which do not invite occupation with the old paraphernalia of living, the old ways of living and

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CHARACTER BUILDING

thinking. They are, in fact, difficult to occupy, and require inventiveness in everyday living in order to become habitable.

They are not predesigned, predetermined, predictable, and predictive. They assert no control over the thought and behavior of people. Rather they offer a dense matrix of new conditions as an armature for living as fully as possible in the present, for living experimentally. The freespaces are, at their inception, useless and meaningless spaces. They

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become useful and acquire meaning only as they are inhabited by particular people. Traditional links with centralized authority, with deterministic and coercive systems, are disrupted. People assume the beneifts and burdens of selforganization. Exsistence continously begins again, by the reinvention of itself. “ Woods, Lebbeus; “War and Architecture: Injections” New York, NY : Princeton Architectural Press, 1993

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SOUTHLIGHT CULTURAL CENTER Over a summer, a group of students along with Ultramoderne Architects, Aaron Forrest and Yasmin Vobis, built a multiuse public pavillion, community garden, and wood fence; the project became known as Southlight. Originally the site was an asphalt parking lot behind a community cultural center and church. The Center, in desperate need for additional space, sought out RISD to create a platform for the neighborhood to exhibit its cultural variety and generate income for the group. Once the site was secured, the RISD Department of Architecture, UltraModerne, and local members of the community came together. From it sprang the multi-use, cost-effective, and economically generative community pavillion and garden.

A publication was called for to memorialize the struggles, good times, and architectural details that made Southlight possible. It would be a manual and archive to the design-build process. Favorite quote: “In the end, the decision is meant to be shared and there is no place for one leader, but a necessity of a community, goverment, and designer working as a network. The real task is to find a dream everyone can identify with and an identity that everyone can be included in.�

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Photo by Naho Kubota

Photo by Naho Kubota

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SOUTHLIGHT CULTURAL CENTER

The pavillion itself was a polycarbonate green house/barn structure that was turned inside out in an advanced studio.

The traditional steel frame barn ‘kit-of-parts’ was the starting point. Reworked, the students arrayed operable doors all along the perimeter and the upright triangular trusses flipped to create a smooth box-like envoloped. The inverted trusses would also be the base for a dynamic lighting layout which brought a cookie cutter barn into the 21st century.

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The project was devised as a three-part design-build. One, the threeseason landscape and rain garden to catch runoff from the exsisting parking lot. Two, the fence and signing. Three, the pavillion and concrete barriers/seating.

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SOUTHLIGHT CULTURAL CENTER

Photo by Naho Kubota

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SOUTHLIGHT CULTURAL CENTER

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DO M E C ITY THE SIS P RO JEC T The city where I struggle to speak, I am a prisoner.

Dome city is the space of the human imagination that deals with freedom. Domes are anologies for the power structures that mark what is inside and what is outside, but never distinguishes how we should feel about either. Domes are our rooms, our cities, our wombs, our minds, domes have the scale we give to them and are, with effort, both our prisons and our sanctuaries.

I have always had trouble reading, writing, and communicating so this is an attempt to move towards my own language and means of representation. To construct a line of thought which offers me the possibilty to construct an entrance to spaces, mental or physical, and the questions of freedom that comes with them. I believe language arises from inhabitation, and that the complexity of the cacophony can be accessible to anybody willing to enter the city (my work).

This thesis has been my attempt to understand the occupation of “domes� for myself and for others and find ways in and out of them.

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THESIS PROJECT

From the mark becoming the cut that allows the hinge to open. A space was born inbetween the plan and the elevation.

A space I began to occupy with casts. First came the square, the circle, and the triangle from the hinges of the grid. From them were born the cube, the dome, and the pyramid. Again from those were born the brick, the womb, and the cross.

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THESIS PROJECT

Dome City is where consciouness confronts, amused/confused, entering in and out.

Creation as the hunt, the treachery of images, Geography mapped and wombs sectioned.

New keys hinged to their locks, prisons in construction, sanctuaries not.

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THESIS PROJECT

A city emerged, a cacophony of generations. The collision of language and drawing gave life to maps. These cities gave account to the epics occuring invisibly all around us. I want listen to these layers, learn about thier voids and expressions, and connect to the network that grows beyond beyond’.

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THESIS PROJECT

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THANK YOU.

PROVIDENCE RI, 02903 +1 817.987.8706

MAGUIRRE@RISD.EDU 2 C O L L E G E S T. # 0 0 1 4

THE ARCHITECTURE OF M. A. AGUIRRE | 2018

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